What more sure sign of it can there be than the onset of massive comment spam (all caught by Akismet)? We’re surging, baby.
Drink to me only with thine eyes
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 27, 2007
A week or 
so ago it was the sad story of Jimi Hendrix on the bottle. Now the TTABlog, which reports on decisions of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, reports on another famous – dead – guy – as – booze – trademark case:
Applicant Anatoliy Bondarchuk failed to fend off a petition for cancellation of his registration of the mark MARC CHAGALL for vodka. The Board not surprisingly found that the mark creates a false suggestion of a connection with the painter Marc Chagall, in violation of Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, and it therefore sustained the petition.
The irony is that Chagall’s paintings always struck me as the kind of thing you would, indeed, find at the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Animals and people getting just a little too close… fowl showing up in the most inappropriate places … lots of questionable aloofness — flying around in the air, that is.
I always thought these paintings looked as if Chagall had stayed for one l’chaim too many. Or that he had a very odd family, indeed. Maybe so — but it’s not for Anatoliy Bondarchuk to profit from it, and so too says the TTAB.
Posted in Ars Longa, Lex scripta | 2 Comments »
Must hear radio
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 27, 2007
Chris Wallace slams pretty boy Keith “Toy Department” Olbermann in a stunning impromptu performance. It’s a pleasure to behold and, of course, the hat tip is courtesy of Bob Cox’s Olby Watch.
Pleasant surprise? Mike Gallagher is still alive! Man, does he do a beautiful “Londonderry Air.”
Disappointment? Continued worship by Wallace at the cult of Edward R. Murrow.
Posted in Medialites | 8 Comments »
With rabbis like this, who needs Judaism?
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 26, 2007
I wouldn’t expect Newsweek to get anything right about Judaism, and would expect their list of The Top Fifty Rabbis in America to be a joke. . . .
But two of them in the top ten aren’t even from the branches of liberal Judaism. They are leaders of other religions entirely. That is to say, unlike the progressive branches of Reform or Conservative who wrestle to find Jewish meaning (and usually lose) in their negotiations with secularism and liberalism, these two religions represented in the top ten contain specifically foreign theological content.
Number four is Yehuda Berg, of the
cultNew Religion, the Kaballah Centre.And the number one (number ?!?) is Rabbi Marvin Hier, the leading theologian for political Holocaustism.
Ouch! With cuts like that, who needs a mohel?
Posted in Americana, Faith and Works | 2 Comments »
Philosophers’ blogging song
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 26, 2007
Or, rather, swan song as a blogging polemicist. Like my putative co-blogger David Nieporent, I stop by Brian Leiter’s blog from time to time. He’s a very intelligent guy — well, both of them are, but I mean Leiter — and Exhibit A+ of how sharp you can be and still absolutely refuse to be mugged by any modicum of reality in your political judgments. Brian and I used to do document review high-level antitrust work for Texaco when we were associates at a big law firm back in the day.
I do remember being struck, as we sat there stupidly sifting through hundreds of boxes looking for the word “oil well” doing substantive attorney review of the factual record in complex commercial litigation, at Brian’s vehemence in arguing against the morality of the first Gulf War. What was even more remarkable was when he insisted, a week into it, when the dreaded Revolutionary Guard took to their heels and ran home, that the moral imbecility of the war was more obvious than ever now because “it’s a slaughter.” His argument was that when you’re winning a war, it’s immoral to continue it. At this point even the mid-level associate (who today is happily helping run a race-car track) who was supervising us, and who by his own admission was no philosopher and no big fan of the war, thought this was among the dumbest things he ever heard.
But Brian is not dumb. He demonstrated just how smart he was by just not showing up for the rest of his life starting one morning and heading back to academia, and he has for years now had a comfy tenured chair in philosophy and law at the University of Texas. He has also run his very spunky, wildly left-wing blog, focusing on a lot of inside baseball in philosophy and law faculties (he seems always to be making my law school, Northwestern University, sound on the brink of extinction), writing about Kant but also dishing plenty of cant. It is a good, and hardly unexamined, life.
Whereas I stayed at that document production and at commercial litigation until blood ran out of the spigots and kept looking, as I do today, for that soft, pliable spot on the wall on which to continue slamming my head.
Brian recently announced, in fact, that he’s going to be toning down his political commentary and focusing more on “philosophy, academia (including academic freedom), and the broader intellectual culture,” partly because “The fact that the war criminals in Washington, DC are in retreat (happily) has also lessened my enthusiasm for dissecting them” and also because, he says, students were too tuned into his political views because of the blog. How Brian intends to return that genie to its lamp — and why he thinks these “war criminals” are “happily” in retreat (though maybe that explains this — Brian loves Instapundit!) — are truly philosophical quandaries. But Brian’s the guy with the laurel wreath here, not me.
Posted in Blogophilia, O Mores! | 4 Comments »
All departments of state are the same, I guess
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 25, 2007
Blair’s talking tough but his foreign ministry people are doing their best to downplay it, going so far as to pretend that the kidnapping is an isolated territorial dispute . . . They nabbed 15 members of the British military one day before a vote on UN sanctions and two days after the AP dropped a bombshell about Mahdi Army involvement with the Revolutionary Guard, and yet the Foreign Office would have us believe that one has nothing to do with the others? Seriously?
Either there’s an exchange program with Foggy Bottom or the spines of the members of England’s “diplomatic corps” are made of the same type of Slinky as ours.
UPDATE: Allah found this, too — evidently these same chaps run the milit’ry as well:
In a dramatic illustration of the different postures adopted by British and US forces working together in Iraq, Lt-Cdr Erik Horner – who has been working alongside the task force to which the 15 captured Britons belonged – said he was “surprised” the British marines and sailors had not been more aggressive. Asked by The Independent whether the men under his command would have fired on the Iranians, he said: “Agreed. Yes. I don’t want to second-guess the British after the fact but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team’s training is a little bit more towards self-preservation.”
The executive officer – second-in-command on USS Underwood, the frigate working in the British-controlled task force with HMS Cornwall – said: ” The unique US Navy rules of engagement say we not only have a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence. They [the British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, ‘Why didn’t your guys defend themselves?'”
His comments came as it was reported British intelligence had been warned by the CIA that Iran would seek revenge for the detention of five suspected Iranian intelligence officers in Iraq two months ago but refused to raise threat levels in line with their US counterparts. The capture of the eight sailors and seven marines – including one young mother – will undoubtedly renew accusations that Britain’s determination to maintain a friendly face in the region has left its troops frequently under protected.
Vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, the Royal Navy team from HMS Cornwall were seized on Friday after completing a UN-authorised inspection of a merchant dhow in what they insist were clearly Iraqi waters. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy appeared in half a dozen attack speedboats mounted with machine guns..
Yesterday, the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Alan West, said British rules of engagement were “very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting … Rather than roaring into action and sinking everything in sight we try to step back and that, of course, is why our chaps were, in effect, able to be captured and taken away.”
Three days after the team were taken hostage, Tony Blair publicly spoke about the diplomatic crisis for the first time. “I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us,” he said.
Quite. Look, it is not unreasonable to take a hit from time to time in order to preserve peace and to be in command of how and when you use force. Ronald Reagan did this with the Russkies in the day, and many of us screamed; yet he won the big show.
On the other hand, this is a theater of war. It is a fundamental mistake to introduce troops into a “shoot to wound” situation. Did Iran choose to pick up the Brits knowing they were under orders to play no more than patty-cake? Remember — these limeys were “vastly outnumbered and out-gunned.” Perhaps Teheran merely took a tactical opportunity presented to it. (UPDATE:) Or planned it very carefully.
Either way, bloody bad show.
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 4 Comments »
Jail bait
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 25, 2007
Sometimes the cops get ahead of the bad guys for at least a little while. If you’ve ever lived outside the New York area and had a car stolen (if you have lived in New York area there’s no “if”) you will enjoy this story on NPR about “bait” cars set out, juicy and plump, for car thieves. They’re not only apprehended with the help of GPS and a remote kill switch, but hidden cameras and microphones inside the cars “offer a glimpse into the lives of thieves at moments of both giddiness and defeat.”
The NPR reporter asks whether there’s an entrapment issue, which of course there is not. But don’t worry: There will be an appeal at some point, and probably a conviction reversed — and probably in the Ninth Circuit. Nah, not entrapment. Think the inalienable constitutional right to privacy. Or maybe the thieves will be members of a “protected class” such as illegal aliens undocumented immigrants.
But I know where I’m putting my money. After all:
“They’re not the smartest folks in the world, though, because the emergency [brake] is actually pulled.” Dengeles says, describing the video of the two giggling thieves . . . “So they spend about a good two to three minutes trying to figure out how to get the car to move.”
“Not the smartest folks in the world” — now there‘s a protected class!
You guessed it: The next conviction for car theft using a bait car will be reversed … under the Americans with Disabilities Act!
Posted in Americana, Lex scripta | 3 Comments »
What is to be done?
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 25, 2007
One thing Al Gore has achieved is to transform himself from a stiff, programmed, unquestionably smart, genetically engineered, second-generation, silver-spoon-in-mouth blueblood U.S. Senator — a favorite of moderate liberal guys like Marty Peretz and appealing enough to someone like me that I voted for him in 1992 — to a sincere, passionate and, of course, hypocritcal extremist.
That’s a sort of progress, isn’t it?
Well, his true predilections are not entirely a surprise, actually: All the way back in 2000, Business Week wrote:
It seems undeniable that Gore’s views on energy and the environment are extreme relative to the opinions of average Americans. One therefore has to wonder why voters are seriously considering him for the Presidency. I think people either doubt Gore’s belief in his own extreme statements or expect the U.S. Congress to impose restraint. Unfortunately, the President has a lot of power to enact energy and environmental policies on his own. Therefore, it seems prudent to take Gore at his word and regard him as a serious threat to carry out the mission described in his book Earth in the Balance.
In 2007, Robert Tracinski is even less sanguine:
Al Gore is trying to dragoon science in an attempt to win over converts who don’t share his sense of personal spiritual crisis and don’t find his anti-industrial moral vision compelling. But the moment people see through his charade–and realize that what Gore is really pushing is a not a scientific campaign against “pollution” but a quasi-religious crusade against industrial civilization–his campaign will collapse.
(Hat tip to Tom Elia.) This, of course, is the “point” of the Manbearpig joke, which is so funny that it may make the whole thing worth it.
The problem isn’t whether “people” will see through Al Gore, of course. People do. But in a world where there is virtually no consensus on anything, polarization is pretty much a plus, especially on the political left. The real question is what “people” who are running for President as Democrats, which I don’t believe Al Gore will be one of, are going to say and do about him and his message… when they will do it… and how the Republican candidate will play the Al Gore card.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 5 Comments »
Navel gazing
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 24, 2007
Geoffrey Andersen masters the genre. Good clean fun!
Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »
We are only amused
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 23, 2007
Think about the Victorians lately? They were, a generation ago, iconic for conservatives, as the quotation from Margaret Thatcher at the link to Slate indicates. But as she points out, she was raised by a Victorian grandmother, for in the 1970’s and ’80’s, people who knew actual Victorians still walked the earth. And not only that — the shuddering of the collapse of their world was still being felt.
Has a civilization ever gone from business casual to morning coats? Not without being rebuilt from the ground up in ways too painful to contemplate. We’re so far from that today that the concept of hearkening back to Victorian anything is pretty comical. We may as well speak of bringing back the Great Awakening or the good old days of Antiquity. It’s not just because of the distance in time: Our culture of slovenliness, gracelessness and, well, just about everything, er, blogging is about is so antithetical to the starched-collar and class-conscious ethos of Victorianism that it is simply impossible to imagine our civilization looking or feeling so civilized — or, of course, so stratified.
Good riddance? Well, if Mrs. Thatcher had some regrets, how can any cultural conservative — damn the historicism! — have none at all? But a century has come and gone and the Victorians, really the ones who ushered in the technological world in the West, only get further away in the rear-view mirror.
Posted in O Mores!, Past is prologue | 4 Comments »
